A New Michelin Arrives, Primed for a Three-Star Rating

K.C. Colwell

Mar 27, 2017

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Sitting down to a meal to find your restaurant boasting Michelin stars on its menu makes you wonder why a rubber company started a side business as a food critic. As it turns out, the aim was to sell tires. The Michelin brothers, starting in 1900, thought that if they gave away a hotel and restaurant guide, affluent French owners of automobiles would drive everywhere to eat amazing food and, in the process, need to buy more tires. And, long before the internet, people would have to stop by a shop selling Michelins to get the latest guide.

Not a bad strategy. The Michelin guide has turned into the definitive tour book for foodies, and Michelin’s tire business is doing okay, too. Aside from winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the 19th year in a row in 2016 and being the spec-tire supplier for Formula E and MotoGP, the bubbly-mascot brand also decided to launch a new line of ultra-high-performance tires, a business sector in which, we think, it already had the market cornered with the Pilot Super Sport (PSS).

When the PSS launched in 2010, it bucked the naming trend previously set by the Pilot Sport and Pilot Sport PS2. There was also a Pilot Sport 3, a tire Americans would only see as original equipment on some cars, with the PSS destined to fulfill the needs of the replacement-tire market. Later, the PSS became the original-equipment fitment on many high-performance cars, too. In fact, we found in one comparison test of the BMW M3, Cadillac ATS-V, and Mercedes-AMG C63 S that all the contenders showed up wearing the PSS.

Michelin could have rested its tire chefs and kept the PSS at the top of its tire pyramid for another few years. That tire won our most recent summer ultra-high-performance tire test, and few street tires have rivaled it in feel.

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Fast-forward to this year, though, and the new Pilot Sport 4S (PS4S) begins supplanting the PSS in 35 different 19- and 20-inch sizes (there’s a single 18-incher). Over the next few years, all PSS sizes will eventually be replaced by the PS4S. A Pilot Sport 4 will also make an appearance in the U.S., but as with the PS3, it will be reserved for OE applications, and aftermarket sales will be limited to those specific fitments.

Don’t worry; the PS4S promises to keep the three-star credentials of the PSS while improving in the important areas of wear and wet-weather performance. Two different elastomers (the fancy engineering word for rubber) are employed in the PS4S. The outside shoulder of the PS4S features a compound dense with carbon black, while the inside shoulder is rich in silica. Carbon black is the key to maximum lateral grip, which is why competition tires are made almost exclusively of the stuff (there are fillers in there, too). Silica fights for grip in the relatively lower temps in wet conditions.

As with many Michelin offerings before, including the PS2 and PSS, the PS4S uses multiple compounds. Along with wet grip, Michelin promises incremental gains in wear, although the same 30,000-mile warranty that has applied to the PSS carries over unchanged. External testing commissioned by Michelin resulted in a forecast of 9 percent better tread life. You wouldn’t think that wear is a priority for buyers of performance-oriented summer UHP tires, but Michelin assures us that longevity rates high on any potential buyer’s list of tire attributes.

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We sampled the new PS4S on a few BMWs in wet and dry conditions at the Thermal Club in Palm Springs, California. It is tough to discern significant differences among tires in just a few laps, but walking away from a wet autocross, we can definitively say that feedback in wet conditions is strong. After surpassing the PS4S’s limit and backing off slightly, grip returns quickly. We will have to wait and get a set of tires to actually quantify how much better this new Pilot is. We won’t be waiting too long, though. Tire Rack already has the initial sizes of PS4S on sale. Prices range from $200 for the 245/40ZR-18 all the way to the $533—gulp—345/30ZR-20.

Aesthetically, the PS4S is a tire. Not much to say there, but sidewalls have the velvetlike finish of the higher-performance Pilot Sport Cup 2, and if you look close, Michelin’s mascot, Bibendum, seems randomly placed on the PS4S’s outside tread block. Actually, though, there’s nothing random about his placement: Bib marks the location of wear bars, making spot checks for motorists a quicker and cleaner affair.

Getting a single star in a Michelin guide can be a big deal for a chef. It can turn a fledgling kitchen into a profit center with a wait list. In our eyes, the PSS was a three-star tire, and unless the Michelin cooks took a drastic turn for the worse, the PS4S will pick up right where the PSS left off.